Arthur Miller Biography | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays | GradeSaver Miller, Arthur Biography of Arthur Miller Arthur Miller was one of the leading American playwrights of the twentieth century. He was born in October 1915 in New York City to a women's clothing manufacturer, who lost everything in the economic collapse of the 1930s. Living through young adulthood during the Great Depression, Miller was shaped by the poverty that surrounded him. The Depression demonstrated to the playwright the fragility and vulnerability of human existence in the modern era. After graduating from high school, Miller worked in a warehouse so that he could earn enough money to attend the University of Michigan, where he began to write plays. Miller's first play to make it to Broadway, The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), was a dismal failure, closing after only four performances. This early setback almost discouraged Miller from writing completely, but he gave himself one more try. Three years later, All My Sons won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award as the best play of 1947, launching Miller into theatrical stardom.

All My Sons, a drama about a manufacturer of faulty war materials, was strongly influenced by the naturalist drama of Henrik Ibsen. Along with Death of a Salesman (his most enduring success), All My Sons and The Man Who Had All the Luck form a thematic trilogy of plays about love triangles involving fathers and sons. The drama of the family is at the core of all of Miller's major plays, but nowhere is it more prominent than in All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. Death of a Salesman (1949) secured Miller's reputation as one of the nation's foremost playwrights. In this play, Miller mixes the tradition of social realism that informs most of his work with a more experimental structure that includes fluid leaps in time as the protagonist, Willy Loman, drifts into memories of his sons as teenagers. Loman represents an American archetype: a victim of his own delusions of grandeur and obsession with success, and haunted by a sense of failure. Miller won a Tony Award for Death of a Salesman as well as a Pulitzer Prize. The play has been frequently revived in film, television, and stage versions that have included actors such as Dustin Hoffman, George C.

Scott and, most recently, Brian Dennehy in the part of Willy Loman. Miller followed Death of a Salesman with his most politically significant work, The Crucible (1953), a tale of the Salem witch trials that contains obvious analogies to the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings in 1950s America. The highly controversial nature of the politics of The Crucible, which lauds those who refuse to name names, led to the play's mixed response. In later years, however, it has become one of the most studied and performed plays of American theater. Three years after The Crucible, in 1956, Miller found himself persecuted by the very force that he warned against, when he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller refused to name people he allegedly saw at a Communist writers' meeting a decade before, and he was convicted of contempt. He later won an appeal. Also in 1956, Miller married actress Marilyn Monroe. The two divorced in 1961, one year before her death. That year Monroe appeared in her last film, The Misfits, which is based on an original screenplay by Miller.

After divorcing Monroe, Miller wed Ingeborg Morath, to whom he remained married until his death in 2005. The pair had a son and a daughter. Miller also wrote the plays A Memory of Two Mondays and the short A View from the Bridge, which were both staged in 1955. His other works include After the Fall (1964), a thinly veiled account of his marriage to Monroe, as well as The Price (1967), The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977), and The American Clock (1980). His most recent works include the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), and Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play. Although Miller did not write frequently for film, he did pen an adaptation for the 1996 film version of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder, which garnered him an Academy Award nomination. Miller's daughter Rebecca married Day-Lewis in 1996.

Study Guides on Works by Arthur Miller Arthur Miller Arthur Miller Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005)[2][3] was an American playwright, essayist, and prominent figure in twentieth-century American theatre. Among his plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955, revised 1956). He also wrote the screenplay for the film The Misfits (1961). Miller was often in the public eye, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During this time, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama; testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee; and was married to Marilyn Monroe. He received the Prince of Asturias Award in 2002 and Jerusalem Prize in 2003.

Early Life Arthur Asher Miller was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, in the New York City borough of Manhattan, the second of three children of Augusta (Barnett) and Isidore Miller. His father was an Austrian Jewish immigrant, and his mother was born in New York, to Austrian Jewish parents.[3][4][5] His father owned a women’s clothing manufacturing business employing 400 people. He became a wealthy and respected man in the community.[6] The family, including his younger sister Joan, lived on West[7] 110th Street in Manhattan and owned a summer house in Far Rockaway, Queens.

They employed a chauffeur.[8] In the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn.[9] As a teenager, Miller delivered bread every morning before school to help the family.[8] After graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay for his college tuition.[9][10] At the University of Michigan, Miller first majored in journalism and worked as a reporter and night editor for the student paper, the Michigan Daily. It was during this time that he wrote his first play, No Villain.[11] Miller switched his major to English, and subsequently won the Avery Hopwood Award for No Villain. The award brought him his first recognition and led him to begin to consider that he could have a career as a playwright.

Miller enrolled in a playwriting seminar taught by the influential Professor Kenneth Rowe, who instructed him in his early forays into playwriting;[12] Rowe emphasized how a play is built in order to achieve its intended effect, or what Miller called “the dynamics of play construction”.[13] Rowe provided realistic feedback along with much-needed encouragement, and became a lifelong friend.[14] Miller retained strong ties to his alma mater throughout the rest of his life, establishing the university’s Arthur Miller Award in 1985 and Arthur Miller Award for Dramatic Writing in 1999, and lending his name to the Arthur Miller Theatre in 2000.[15] In 1937, Miller wrote Honors at Dawn, which also received the Avery Hopwood Award.[11] In 1938, Miller received a BA in English. After graduation, he joined the Federal Theater Project, a New Deal agency established to provide jobs in the theater.

He chose the theater project although he had an offer to work as a scriptwriter for 20th Century Fox.[11] However, Congress, worried about possible Communist infiltration, closed the project in 1939.[9] Miller began working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard while continuing to write radio plays, some of which were broadcast on CBS.[9][11] In 1940, he married Mary Grace Slattery.[2] The couple had two children, Jane and Robert (born May 31, 1947). Miller was exempted from military service during World War II because of a high-school football injury to his left kneecap.[9] Early Career Miller wrote The Man Who Had All the Luck, which was produced in New Jersey in 1940 and won the Theatre Guild’s National Award.[16] The play closed after four performances with disastrous reviews.[17] In his book Trinity of Passion, author Alan M.

Wald conjectures that Miller was “a member of a writer’s unit of the Communist Party around 1946,” using the pseudonym Matt Wayne, and editing a drama column in the magazine The New Masses.[18] In 1946, Miller’s play All My Sons, the writing of which had commenced in 1941, was a success on Broadway (earning him his first Tony Award, for Best Author) and his reputation as a playwright was established.[19] Years later, in a 1994 interview with Ron Rifkin, Miller said that most contemporary critics regarded All My Sons as “a very depressing play in a time of great optimism” and that positive reviews from Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times had saved it from failure.[20] In 1948, Miller built a small studio in Roxbury, Connecticut. There, in less than a day, he wrote Act I of Death of a Salesman .

Within six weeks, he completed the rest of the play,[11] one of the classics of world theater.[9][21] Death of a Salesman premiered on Broadway on February 10, 1949 at the Morosco Theatre, directed by Elia Kazan, and starring Lee J. Cobb as Willy Loman, Mildred Dunnock as Linda, Arthur Kennedy as Biff, and Cameron Mitchell as Happy. The play was commercially successful and critically acclaimed, winning a Tony Award for Best Author, the New York Drama Circle Critics’ Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was the first play to win all three of these major awards. The play was performed 742 times.[9] In 1952, Kazan appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); unwilling to risk his promising career in Hollywood for the Communist cause that he had come to despise, Kazan named eight members of the Group Theatre, including Clifford Odets, Paula Strasberg, Lillian Hellman, J.

Edward Bromberg, and John Garfield,[22] who in recent years had been fellow members of the Communist Party.[23] After speaking with Kazan about his testimony Miller travelled to Salem, Massachusetts to research the witch trials of 1692.[2] The Crucible , in which Miller likened the situation with the House Un-American Activities Committee to the witch hunt in Salem in 1692,[24][25] opened at the Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953. Though widely considered only somewhat successful at the time of its initial release, today The Crucible is Miller’s most frequently produced work throughout the world[2] and was adapted into an opera by Robert Ward, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1962.

Miller and Kazan were close friends throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s, but after Kazan’s testimony to the HUAC, the pair’s friendship ended, and they did not speak to each other for the next ten years.[23] The HUAC took an interest in Miller himself not long after The Crucible opened, denying him a passport to attend the play’s London opening in 1954.[11] Kazan defended his own actions through his film On the Waterfront, in which a dockworker heroically testifies against a corrupt union boss. Miller’s experience with the HUAC affected him throughout his life. In the late 1970s he became very interested in the highly publicized Barbara Gibbons murder case, in which Gibbons’ son Peter Reilly was convicted of his mother’s murder based on what many felt was a coerced confession and little other evidence.

City Confidential, an A&E Network series, produced an episode about the murder, postulating that part of the reason Miller took such an active interest (including supporting Reilly’s defense and using his own celebrity to bring attention to Reilly’s plight) was because he had felt similarly persecuted in his run-ins with the HUAC. He sympathized with Reilly, whom he firmly believed to be innocent and to have been railroaded by the Connecticut State Police and the Attorney General who had initially prosecuted the case.[26][27] 1956–1964 In 1956, a one-act version of Miller’s verse drama A View from the Bridge opened on Broadway in a joint bill with one of Miller’s lesser-known plays, A Memory of Two Mondays. The following year, Miller revised A View from the Bridge as a two-act prose drama, which Peter Brook directed in London.[28] A French-Italian co-production Vu du pont, based on the play, was released in 1962.

In June 1956, Miller left his first wife Mary Slattery and on June 29 he married Marilyn Monroe.[2] Miller and Monroe had met in April 23, 1951, when they had a brief affair, and had remained in contact since then.[2][9] When Miller applied in 1956 for a routine renewal of his passport, the HUAC used this opportunity to subpoena him to appear before the committee. Before appearing, Miller asked the committee not to ask him to name names, to which the chairman, Francis E. Walter (D-PA) agreed.[29] When Miller attended the hearing, to which Monroe accompanied him, risking her own career,[2] he gave the committee a detailed account of his political activities. Reneging on the chairman’s promise, the committee demanded the names of friends and colleagues who had participated in similar activities.[29] Miller refused to comply, saying “I could not use the name of another person and bring trouble on him.”[29] As a result, a judge found Miller guilty of contempt of Congress in May 1957.

Miller was sentenced to a $500 fine or thirty days in prison, blacklisted, and disallowed a US passport.[3] In 1958, his conviction was overturned by the court of appeals, which ruled that Miller had been misled by the chairman of the HUAC.[3] Miller began work on The Misfits, starring his wife. Miller later said that the filming was one of the lowest points in his life; shortly before the film’s premiere in 1961, the pair divorced.[2][11] 19 months later, Monroe died of a possible drug overdose. Miller’s future wife Inge Morath worked as a photographer documenting the film’s production. The film proved to be the last appearances for both Monroe and Clark Gable, and one of the last for Montgomery Clift. Miller married photographer Inge Morath on February 17, 1962 and the first of their two children, Rebecca, was born September 15, 1962.

Their son Daniel was born with Down syndrome in November 1966; he was institutionalized and excluded from the Millers’ personal life at Arthur’s insistence.[30] The couple remained together until Inge’s death in 2002. Arthur Miller’s son-in-law, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, is said to have visited Daniel frequently, and to have persuaded Arthur Miller to reunite with his adult son, Daniel.[31] Later Career In 1964 Miller’s next play was produced. After the Fall is a deeply personal view of Miller’s experiences during his marriage to Monroe. The play reunited Miller with his former friend Kazan: they collaborated on both the script and the direction. After the Fall opened on January 23, 1964 at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square Park amid a flurry of publicity and outrage at putting a Monroe-like character, called Maggie, on stage.[2] Robert Brustein, in a review in the New Republic, called After the Fall “a three and one half hour breach of taste, a confessional autobiography of embarrassing explicitness . . . there is a misogynistic strain in the play which the author does not seem to recognize. . . .

He has created a shameless piece of tabloid gossip, an act of exhibitionism which makes us all voyeurs, . . . a wretched piece of dramatic writing.”[32] That same year, Miller produced Incident at Vichy. In 1965, Miller was elected the first American president of PEN International, a position which he held for four years.[33] A year later, Miller organized the 1966 PEN congress in New York City. Miller also wrote the penetrating family drama, The Price, produced in 1968.[2] It was Miller’s most successful play since Death of a Salesman.[34] In 1969, Miller’s works were banned in the Soviet Union after he campaigned for the freedom of dissident writers.[11] Throughout the 1970s, Miller spent much of his time experimenting with the theatre, producing one-act plays such as Fame and The Reason Why, and traveling with his wife, producing In The Country and Chinese Encounters with her.

Both his 1972 comedy The Creation of the World and Other Business and its musical adaptation, Up from Paradise, were critical and commercial failures.[35][36] Miller was an unusually articulate commentator on his own work. In 1978 he published a collection of his Theater Essays, edited by Robert A. Martin and with a foreword by Miller. Highlights of the collection included Miller’s introduction to his Collected Plays, his reflections on the theory of tragedy, comments on the McCarthy Era, and pieces arguing for a publicly supported theater. Reviewing this collection in the Chicago Tribune, Studs Terkel remarked, “in reading [the Theater Essays]…you are exhilaratingly aware of a social critic, as well as a playwright, who knows what he’s talking about.”[37] In 1983, Miller traveled to China to produce and direct Death of a Salesman at the People’s Art Theatre in Beijing. The play was a success in China[34] and in 1984, Salesman in Beijing, a book about Miller’s experiences in Beijing, was published.

Around the same time, Death of a Salesman was made into a TV movie starring Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman. Shown on CBS, it attracted 25 million viewers.[11][38] In late 1987, Miller’s autobiographical work, Timebends, was published. Before it was published, it was well known that Miller would not talk about Monroe in interviews; in Timebends Miller talks about his experiences with Monroe in detail.[2] During the early 1990s Miller wrote three new plays, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1992), and Broken Glass (1994). In 1996, a film of The Crucible starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder opened. Miller spent much of 1996 working on the screenplay to the film.[11] Mr. Peters’ Connections was staged Off-Broadway in 1998, and Death of a Salesman was revived on Broadway in 1999 to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary.

The play, once again, was a large critical success, winning a Tony Award for best revival of a play.[39] In 1993, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.[40] Miller was honored with the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for a Master American Dramatist in 1998. In 2001 the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) selected Miller for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities.[41] Miller’s lecture was entitled “On Politics and the Art of Acting.”[42] Miller’s lecture analyzed political events (including the U.S.

presidential election of 2000) in terms of the “arts of performance,” and it drew attacks from some conservatives[43] such as Jay Nordlinger, who called it “a disgrace,” [44] and George Will, who argued that Miller was not legitimately a “scholar.”[45] In 1999 Miller was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”[46] In 2001, Miller received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. On May 1, 2002, Miller was awarded Spain’s Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature as “the undisputed master of modern drama.” Later that year, Ingeborg Morath died of lymphatic cancer[47] at the age of 78.

The following year Miller won the Jerusalem Prize.[11] In December 2004, the 89-year-old Miller announced that he had been in love with 34-year-old minimalist painter Agnes Barley and had been living with her at his Connecticut farm since 2002, and that they intended to marry.[48] Within hours of her father’s death, Rebecca Miller ordered Barley to vacate the premises, having consistently opposed the relationship.[49] Miller’s final play, Finishing the Picture, opened at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, in the fall of 2004, with one character said to be based on Barley.[50] It was reported to be based on his experience during the filming The Misfits,[51] though Miller insisted the play is a work of fiction with independent characters that were no more than composite shadows of history.[52] Death Miller died of heart failure after a battle against cancer, pneumonia and congestive heart disease at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut.

He had been in hospice care at his sister’s apartment in New York since his release from hospital the previous month.[53] He died on the evening of February 10, 2005 (the 56th anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman), aged 89, surrounded by Barley, family and friends.[54][55] He is interred at Roxbury Center Cemetery in Roxbury. Legacy Arthur Miller’s career as a writer spanned over seven decades, and at the time of his death, Miller was considered to be one of the greatest dramatists of the twentieth century.[21] After his death, many respected actors, directors, and producers paid tribute to Miller,[56] some calling him the last great practitioner of the American stage,[57] and Broadway theatres darkened their lights in a show of respect.[58] Miller’s alma mater, the University of Michigan, opened the Arthur Miller Theatre in March 2007.

As per his express wish, it is the only theatre in the world that bears Miller’s name.[59] Two months after Miller dies Peter O’Toole called him a “bore”.[60] Roger Kimball considered Miller’s artistic accomplishments meager.[61] Christopher Bigsby wrote Arthur Miller: The Definitive Biography based on boxes of papers Miller made available to him before his death in 2005.[62] The book was published in November 2008, and is reported to reveal unpublished works in which Miller “bitterly attack[ed] the injustices of American racism long before it was taken up by the civil rights movement”.[62] Miller’s papers are housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin. Arthur Miller is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

He was inducted in 1979.[63][64] They Too Arise (1937, based on No Villain) Honors at Dawn (1938, based on They Too Arise) The Grass Still Grows (1938, based on They Too Arise) The Great Disobedience (1938) Listen My Children (1939, with Norman Rosten) The Golden Years (1940) The Man Who Had All the Luck (1940)[62] The Half-Bridge (1943) A View from the Bridge (1955) A Memory of Two Mondays (1955) Fame (one-act, 1970; revised for television 1978) The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972) The Archbishop’s Ceiling (1977) The American Clock (1980) Playing for Time (television play, 1980) Elegy for a Lady (short play, 1982, first part of Two Way Mirror) Some Kind of Love Story (short play, 1982

, second part of Two Way Mirror) I Think About You a Great Deal (1986) Playing for Time (stage version, 1985) I Can’t Remember Anything (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!) Clara (1987, collected in Danger: Memory!) The Last Yankee (1991) The Ride Down Mt.

Morgan (1991) Broken Glass (1994) Mr Peter’s Connections (1998) Resurrection Blues (2002) The Pussycat and the Expert Plumber Who Was a Man (1941) Joel Chandler Harris (1941) The Battle of the Ovens (1942) Thunder from the Mountains (1942) I Was Married in Bataan (1942) The Four Freedoms (1942) That They May Win (1943) Listen for the Sound of Wings (1943) Bernardine (1944) Presence: Stories (short stories, 2007) Non-Fiction Situation Normal (1944) is based on his experiences researching the war correspondence of Ernie Pyle. In Russia (1969), the first of three books created with his photographer wife Inge Morath, offers Miller’s impressions of Russia and Russian society. In the Country (1977), with photographs by Morath and text by Miller, provides insight into how Miller spent his time in Roxbury, Connecticut and profiles of his various neighbors.

Chinese Encounters (1979) is a travel journal with photographs by Morath. It depicts the Chinese society in the state of flux which followed the end of the Cultural Revolution. Miller discusses the hardships of many writers, professors, and artists as they try to regain the sense of freedom and place they lost during Mao Zedong’s regime. Salesman in Beijing (1984) details Miller’s experiences with the 1983 Beijing People’s Theatre production of Death of a Salesman. He describes the idiosyncrasies, understandings, and insights encountered in directing a Chinese cast in a decidedly American play. Timebends: A Life, Methuen London (1987) ISBN 0-413-41480-9. Like Death of a Salesman, the book follows the structure of memory itself, each passage linked to and triggered by the one before. Collections Kushner, Tony, ed. Arthur Miller, Collected Plays 1944–1961 (Library of America, 2006) ISBN 978-1-931082-91-4. Martin, Robert A.

(ed.), “The theater essays of Arthur Miller”, foreword by Arthur Miller. NY: Viking Press, 1978 ISBN 0-14-004903-7. Steven R Centola, ed.

Echoes Down the Corridor: Arthur Miller, Collected Essays 1944–2000, Viking Penguin (US)/Methuen (UK), 2000 ISBN 0-413-75690-4 Biographies and Critical Studies of Miller File on Miller, Christopher Bigsby (1988) Arthur Miller & Company, Christopher Bigsby, editor (1990) Arthur Miller: A Critical Study, Christopher Bigsby (2005) Remembering Arthur Miller, Christopher Bigsby, editor (2005) Arthur Miller 1915–1962, Christopher Bigsby (2008, U.K.; 2009, U.S.) The Cambridge Companion to Arthur Miller (Cambridge Companions to Literature), Christopher Bigsby, editor (1998, updated and republished 2010) Arthur Miller 1962–2005, Christopher Bigsby (February 2011) Critical Articles Radavich, David.

“Arthur Miller’s Sojourn in the Heartland.” American Drama 16:2 (Summer 2007): 28–45. References Miller, quoted in the program for the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of his play Broken Glass, from an interview by Caroline Scott and Alexandra Lautenbacher in Sunday Times Magazine (1995), says, “I have no formal religion but there’s a space in my head for it. Maybe I would believe in God if he believed in me. But we’re living in a reality that’s so hard to understand. In the last 75 years the human race has been humiliated in a way we’ve never known before…” “Obituary: Arthur Miller” . The Guardian (UK). February 11, 2005. p. 25. Archived from the original on July 23, 2012. Retrieved July 23, 2012. “Arthur Miller Files” . University of Michigan. Archived from the original on October 16, 2006. Retrieved October 1, 2006.

All My Sons - Arthur Miller - Google Books Arthur Miller 1 Review Joe Keller knowingly sells cracked cylinder heads to the makers of Air Force planes. He later discovers that his own son was in one of the planes that subsequently crashed. Each play in the Hereford Plays series is supported by practical advice and classroom activities, while many have large casts and an equal mix of parts for boys and girls. User Review - Flag as inappropriate Michael and Abraham are the hardest working and most polite men I've ever had to deal with! I'm not kidding. We live on a hill and the driveway is in a valley. The only door these wonderful men could move things out of was our front door which has nine step stairs. They had to park the truck at the bottom of the driveway, Go up the hill to the front door and climb 9 stairs to get in. Everything they wrapped, even when we didn't think it needed it. They handled the furniture with great care, boxes they made sure each was secure. They were careful not to run into any door frames or doors in the house. They didn't drop anything. These guys never stopped working from the time they got here this morning.

They made sure an asked questions about where things were going, either storage unit or house. and set the truck up inside accordingly. I've never seen 2 men work so well together either. Mike and Abraham were perfect gentlemen and respectful to our needs. I would recommend them to the anyone that needed professional movers!! They are very professional and represent your company extremely well. I hope you commend them too and treat them well because they are worth wanting to keep as employees. Thank you for sending these God sent men to help us during this very trying time in our lives. They have been a blessing to us and are to your company. Please recognize their hard work and ability to help others. Thank you Sincerely and very Happy Customers, Ken & Linda Table of Contents Common terms and phrases All Book Search results &raquo; About the author (1971) The son of a well-to-do New York Jewish family, Miller graduated from high school and then went to work in a warehouse. He was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York City.

His plays have been called "political," but he considers the areas of literature and politics to be quite separate and has said, "The only sure and valid aim---speaking of art as a weapon---is the humanizing of man." The recurring theme of all his plays is the relationship between a man's identity and the image that society demands of him. After two years, he entered the University of Michigan, where he soon started writing plays. All My Sons (1947), a Broadway success that won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1947, tells the story of a son, home from the war, who learns that his brother's death was due to defective airplane parts turned out by their profiteering father. Death of a Salesman (1949), Miller's experimental yet classical American tragedy, received both the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1949. It is a poignant statement of a man facing himself and his failure. In The Crucible (1953), a play about bigotry in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, Miller brings into focus the social tragedy of a society gone mad, as well as the agony of a heroic individual.

The play was generally considered to be a comment on the McCarthyism of its time. Miller himself appeared before the Congressional Un-American Activities Committee and steadfastly refused to involve his friends and associates when questioned about them. His screenplay for The Misfits (1961), from his short story, was written for his second wife, actress Marilyn Monroe (see Vol. 3); After the Fall (1964) has clear autobiographical overtones and involves the story of this ill-fated marriage as well as further dealing with Miller's experiences with McCarthyism. In the one-act Incident at Vichy (1964), a group of men are picked off the streets one morning during the Nazi occupation of France. The Price (1968) is a psychological drama concerning two brothers, one a police officer, one a wealthy surgeon, whose long-standing conflict is explored over the disposal of their father's furniture. The Creation of the World and Other Business (1973) is a retelling of the story of Genesis, attempted as a comedy. The American Clock (1980) explores the impact of the Depression on the nation and its individual citizens. Among Miller's most recent works is Danger: Memory!

(1987), a study of two elderly friends. During the 1980s, almost all of Miller's plays were given major British revivals, and the playwright's work has been more popular in Britain than in the United States of late. Miller died of heart failure after a battle against cancer, pneumonia and congestive heart disease at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was 89 years old. All My Sons | People's Light The Playwright HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS PRODUCTION In 1947, it won the Tony Award for Best Author (now a retired category) and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. In 1987, it won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Featuring company member Melanye Finister and numerous returning guest artists including Michael Genet, Brian Anthony Wilson; these 3 actors anchored last year’s production of Fences. By casting mainly Black actors, the production will offer a distinctive and invigorating new take on this American classic. THEMES OF THIS PLAY What is the responsibility of an individual to the larger society? What happens when a man puts himself and his family above his moral obligations to society and the world?

How does war change “all the tallies”? The pressures of production and monetary dealings in the business of war. The love and dedication among fathers and sons The high stakes of self-deception for self-preservation What secrets are best kept? When we lose someone we love, how do/can we let them go? WHY DID PEOPLE’S LIGHT CHOOSE THIS PLAY? “People’s Light is committed to producing iconic works of dramatic literature, With Fences, we learned it is still possible to draw audiences in the early fall with a major American classic. Miller’s play shares some striking characteristics and traits with Wilson’s: an exploration of mid-20th Century American complexity through the experiences of one family and their neighbors; a blend of myth and realism; the fall of a patriarch; a backyard; a tree. In this time when America must again grapple with its dreams and failures, we seize this unique opportunity to highlight Miller and Wilson’s kindred stories with productions exactly one year apart, each directed by Kamilah Forbes and featuring company member Melanye Finister and three returning guest artists, Michael Genet, Wendell Franklin and Brian Anthony Wilson.

With a mainly Black cast, actors traditionally excluded from these anchors of the American theatrical canon will now be at its center. How this informs future productions of classic works by us and others, we do not know yet, but it will certainly add a voice to that dialogue.” —Producing Director Zak Berkman Plot Summary Time: 1947 Place: Back yard of the Keller home located in the outskirts of an unnamed American town Joe Keller owns a successful metal working factory that produced parts for military aircrafts during World War II. His son, Chris, having survived and returned home from the War, is set to inherit the family business. His elder son, Larry, was an Air Force pilot reported MIA over three years ago. Chris has invited Ann Deever, who grew up next door to the Kellers, for a visit with the intent to propose to her. The play begins the morning after Ann has arrived. During the course of the day, we learn that Ann was once engaged to Larry but that through correspondence, Chris and Ann have now fallen in love with each other. Chris’ mother, Kate, ardently holds on to the belief that Larry is alive and therefore cannot condone their relationship.

We also gradually learn that Ann’s father, Steve, was once Joe’s business partner and that both Steve and Joe were arrested and convicted for knowingly selling cracked cylinder heads to the Army Air Force that resulted in 21 deaths. Joe is exonerated through an appeal, putting the blame entirely on Steve, whose ashamed family abandoned him as he was imprisoned. Ann’s older brother, George, arrives at the Kellers’ to prevent her marriage to Chris. After an unprecedented visit to his father in prison, he confronts Ann and the Kellers with the truth of Joe’s involvement in the crime. Although he is almost won over by Kate’s charm and Joe’s engaging candor, his conviction is reaffirmed, revealing Kate’s fragile belief in Joe’s innocence. For Kate, Larry’s death would mean that Joe is guilty of killing his own son. As Chris finally comes to terms with the whole truth, Joe argues that his actions were to protect the business for his son. Although Ann realizes that she has also been misled about the crime that devastated her family, she is unwilling to sacrifice her marriage and face a lonely future.

As a last resort, she shows Kate a letter that Larry wrote telling her of his knowledge and shame of his family’s “business” and that he intended to kill himself while out on their next mission. When Joe sees the letter, he finally realizes that his actions betrayed not only his sons, but all sons. He agrees to turn himself in. As Chris, Kate, and Ann wait in the yard, Joe ends his life with a gunshot. Who's Who Joe Keller In his sixties. He is a pillar among men, beloved by the town in which he lives and a successful business owner. Husband to Kate and father of 2 sons, Larry (deceased) and Chris. Engaging, charismatic, and persuasive. In the stage directions, he’s described: “A heavy man of stolid mind and build, a business man these many years, but with the imprint of the machine-shop worker and boss still upon him. When he reads, when he speaks, when he listens, it is with the terrible concentration of the uneducated man for whom there is still wonder in many commonly known things, a man whose judgments must be dredged out of experience and a pleasant-like common sense. A man among men.” Kate Keller Fifties.

A fiercely devoted mother and wife. Vivacious and charming yet persistent and firm. Described in the stage directions as “a woman of uncontrolled inspirations, and an overwhelming capacity for love.” Chris Keller Thirties. Only surviving son of the Keller family. Went to war 5 years ago (1942) and has returned burdened with survivor’s guilt. Heir to the family business. Wants to build a career and family that inspires him. Ardently loves his parents. Described in the staged directions as “like his father, solidly built, a listener. A man capable of immense affection and loyalty.” Ann Deever Twenties. Grew up next door to the Kellers. Good-natured, strong, and attractive. She has been living in NY for the past 3 ½ years. Described in the stage directions as “gentle but despite herself capable of holding fast to what she knows.” George Deever Thirties. Ann’s older brother, also grew up with the Kellers and fought in the War. Now a lawyer. Stern, but can be affable. Dr. Jim Bayliss Nearing 40.

Next-door neighbor to the Kellers, living in the former Deever house. A general practitioner who has “settled” in life. Described in the stage directions as “A wry self-controlled man, an easy talker, but with a wisp of sadness that clings even to his self-effacing humor.” Sue Bayliss Rounding 40. Dr. Jim Bayliss’ wife. Previously a nurse. Playful but practical and direct. Described in the stage directions as “an overweight woman who fears it.” Frank Lubey Thirties. The Kellers’ other next-door neighbor. Was always one year ahead of the draft age range, resulting in a keen interest in astrology. Described in the stage directions as “a pleasant, opinionated man, uncertain of himself, with a tendency toward peevishness when crossed, but always wanting it pleasant and neighborly.” Lydia Lubey Twenties. Married to Frank and mother of 3 children. Grew up in the neighborhood and was possibly once a love-interest of George Deever before the war.

Described in the stage directions as “robust, laughing girl.” Bert About 8 years old; dubbed a “policeman” by Keller and reports the news from the neighborhood. THE PLAYWRIGHT Here’s a timeline Miller’s greatest career achievements: 1936 Arthur Miller writes his first play, No Villain, in a playwriting class at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He wins the prestigious Avery Hopwood Award for excellence in writing. 1938-1944 Miller joins the Federal Theatre Project and begins to write radio plays, some of which are broadcast on CBS. 1944 The Man Who Had All the Luck opens on Broadway to disappointing reviews and closes after only four performances. 1945 Miller writes Focus, a novel about an anti-Semite who is mistaken for a Jew. 1947 All My Sons (directed by Elia Kazan) premieres on Broadway to rave reviews. 1949 The opening of Death of a Salesman solidifies Miller’s place in the American theatrical and literary canons. 1949 Miller publishes his famed essay “The Tragedy of the Common Man” in the New York Times.

1950 Miller adapts Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, another play that confronts themes of communal and social responsibility. 1953 The Crucible opens on Broadway, sparking governmental suspicion about Miller’s “un-American” lifestyle. 1955 A View from the Bridge opens on Broadway, introducing audiences to yet another tragic Miller character, Eddie Carbone. 1961 Miller writes the screenplay for The Misfits, based on his short story. The movie stars Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe, Miller’s then-wife. 1967 Miller publishes I Don’t Need You Anymore, a collection of short stories. 1968 The Price opens on Broadway; it is a play that boldly confronts themes of materialism and class. 1969 Miller publishes In Russia with photographer wife Inge Morath, detailing their impressions of Russian culture during The Cold War. 1970 Miller writes Fame, a television play about a playwright troubled by his success. 1972 The Creation of the World and Other Business, a play inspired by the book of Genesis, is considered Miller’s first commercial failure since The Man Who Had All the Luck in 1944.

1977 With his wife, Miller publishes In the Country. The book is a series of photographs by Morath with text written by Miller on their life in Roxbury, Conn. 1980 The American Clock opens on Broadway, featuring characters loosely based on Miller’s family. 1984 Miller publishes Salesman in Beijing, detailing the insights and challenges of directing a decidedly American play in a foreign country. 1987 Miller publishes his autobiography, Timebends: A Life. 1990 Miller writes the screenplay for a detective film entitled Everybody Wins. The film receives dreadful reviews, but Miller’s reputation remains untarnished. 1994 Broken Glass, a play based on the Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany, premieres at the Long Wharf Theatre in Connecticut; it later wins a Tony Award for Best Play. 1996 Miller writes the screenplay for The Crucible. 2002 Resurrection Blues, Miller’s biting comedy about religious dogma, premieres at The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. 2004 Miller’s final play, Finishing the Picture, premieres at the Goodman Theatre just months before his death.

The play is a dramatization of his time shooting the movie The Misfits, with then-wife Marilyn Monroe. Articles Summary/Reviews: Mr. Peters' connections / Mr. Peters' connections / No Tags, Be the first to tag this record! Saved in: Staff View SUMMARY Produced in May 1998 in New York and starring Peter Falk, Mr. Peters' Connections takes place, in Miller's own words, in "that suspended state of consciousness when the mind is freed to roam from real memories to conjectures, from trivialities to tragic insights, from terror of death to glorying in one's being alive." Within the confines of his mind, Mr. Peters interacts with the living members of his family and his long-deceased brother and lover, as well as the imaginary Adele, a black bag lady, who is a figment of Peters' imagination and one of Miller's most original characters. "A work of rare honesty and dignity" (Fintan O'Toole, New York Daily News), Mr. Peters' Connections uncoils with ferocious, life-affirming intensity. Copyright (c) Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Review by Booklist Review Often called a naturalist, Miller yet writes plays that are as much about dreams and people lost in them as about reality. Half of Willy Loman's tragedy in Death of a Salesman is that he hasn't lived in the real world in decades. Even The Crucible, while grounded in the historic colonial Massachusetts, focuses on mass hallucination. Rarely, however, does Miller allow the dream world to invade a play as completely as in this extended one-act set entirely in the mind of snoozing Mr. Peters. It develops like some fevered dream, with long-dead relatives popping in for short visits and people making the most extravagant demands. Sections of it seem like outtakes from earlier Miller plays, especially--in a sequence featuring the protagonist's Marilyn Monroe^-like significant other, who ignites the libido of every man she meets--After the Fall. More often, it seems more like something from Edward Albee's zoo, which is no bad thing. It is fascinating to see America's greatest living playwright at work in a totally surreal world. --Jack Helbig From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

Review by Library Journal Review At the age of 84, 50 years after he received the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman, Miller remains the premiere living American dramatist and one of the three or four greatest of this century. This play, which debuted Off Broadway last year with Peter Falk in the title role, is Miller's strongest play in 30 years. Effectively using absurdist techniques, Miller places Mr. Peters, a retired pilot, in an abandoned bar, where he encounters his deceased brother, an ex-lover and the man he imagines she might have married had she lived, his daughter and her boyfriend, his wife, and a bag lady who, like most of the other characters, may be a figment of Peters's imagination. With all of them, he seeks connection and, if possible, an answer to the question, "What is the subject?"Äor, indeed, whether we even need a subject any longer. These existential questions are old ones; Miller gives them stunning dramatic shape and force. Essential for all American literature collections.ÄRobert W. Melton, Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence (c) Copyright 2010.

Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. (c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. AUTHOR NOTES The son of a well-to-do New York Jewish family, Miller graduated from high school and then went to work in a warehouse. He was born on October 17, 1915, in Harlem, New York City. His plays have been called "political," but he considers the areas of literature and politics to be quite separate and has said, "The only sure and valid aim---speaking of art as a weapon---is the humanizing of man." The recurring theme of all his plays is the relationship between a man's identity and the image that society demands of him. After two years, he entered the University of Michigan, where he soon started writing plays. All My Sons (1947), a Broadway success that won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1947, tells the story of a son, home from the war, who learns that his brother's death was due to defective airplane parts turned out by their profiteering father.

Death of a Salesman (1949), Miller's experimental yet classical American tragedy, received both the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1949. It is a poignant statement of a man facing himself and his failure. In The Crucible (1953), a play about bigotry in the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692, Miller brings into focus the social tragedy of a society gone mad, as well as the agony of a heroic individual. The play was generally considered to be a comment on the McCarthyism of its time. Miller himself appeared before the Congressional Un-American Activities Committee and steadfastly refused to involve his friends and associates when questioned about them. His screenplay for The Misfits (1961), from his short story, was written for his second wife, actress Marilyn Monroe (see Vol. 3); After the Fall (1964) has clear autobiographical overtones and involves the story of this ill-fated marriage as well as further dealing with Miller's experiences with McCarthyism. In the one-act Incident at Vichy (1964), a group of men are picked off the streets one morning during the Nazi occupation of France.

The Price (1968) is a psychological drama concerning two brothers, one a police officer, one a wealthy surgeon, whose long-standing conflict is explored over the disposal of their father's furniture. The Creation of the World and Other Business (1973) is a retelling of the story of Genesis, attempted as a comedy. The American Clock (1980) explores the impact of the Depression on the nation and its individual citizens. Among Miller's most recent works is Danger: Memory! (1987), a study of two elderly friends. During the 1980s, almost all of Miller's plays were given major British revivals, and the playwright's work has been more popular in Britain than in the United States of late. Miller died of heart failure after a battle against cancer, pneumonia and congestive heart disease at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was 89 years old. (Bowker Author Biography) Arthur Miller, American playwright, was born on October 17, 1915, in New York City. He earned an AB from the University of Michigan and began to write plays while still a student.

He won the first of his many awards, the Avery Hopwood Prize of the University of Michigan, for his first play, Honors at Dawn. This was followed by many other award-winning plays. One of the best-known of these, Death of a Salesman, won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1949 as well as a Drama Critics Circle Award; it continues to be one of the most frequently performed and adapted plays of this century. Some of his other titles include The Crucible, A View From the Bridge, The Misfits, After the Fall, and Vichy. Miller also wrote several travel pieces, including In Russia and Chinese Encounters (both in collaboration with his third wife, Ingeborg Morath); a novel, Focus; and the autobiography, Timebends: A Life. Arthur Miller was married to Mary Grace Slattery in 1940. They had two children and were divorced in 1952. In 1956, he married actress Marilyn Monroe and they divorced in 1961. He married Morath in 1962 and they have two children together. (Bowker Author Biography)

Question: All My Sons (1947) and The Misfits (1961) are both plays written by whom?
Answer: Arthur Miller